Nexus and Tigers set to collide

[sykesg]

Originally posted by Intheno
In HB I was asked many times if there was a local team playing the event. I was asked this in Denver too. In fact it is often one of the first questions asked. Locals want to know what team they should be rooting for.

the problem now is that the local team has lost it's tag due to marketing reasons over geography - confusing to the spectators

 

[Steve Morris]

Originally posted by sykesg
the problem now is that the local team has lost it's tag due to marketing reasons over geography - confusing to the spectators

I agree. In the NXL what does Detroit have to do with Strange when the team is essentially a Florida team? And if Major League Baseball allows more than one team for the big cities why can't NPPL like we did in EXL?

Gareth, just change the team name to "The Londoners". Then they won't be able to do much.

 

[Baca Loco]

Steve--not quite the same thing. The expectation in the NXL was that the league would morph--on a river of TV cheese--into an actual sports league where matches were/are conducted home and away, etc. Precisely how simply appearing on TV gets you from here to there seems to be one of many unasked and unanswered question. [Though look for both in upcoming 'Views' about the NXL]

 

[sykesg]

Originally posted by Steve Morris
I agree. In the NXL what does Detroit have to do with Strange when the team is essentially a Florida team? And if Major League Baseball allows more than one team for the big cities why can't NPPL like we did in EXL?

Gareth, just change the team name to "The Londoners". Then they won't be able to do much.

Hi Steve,

there are a few options we're toying with but they're last resorts - we've found city's around the world called England, English, British etc etc.

 

[Baca Loco]

Originally posted by Intheno
1--Actually Loco you may be surprised, but the city names ARE important to the teams AND the league at present.
2--Of course it is 'cooler' and more 'controvertial' to say they aren't, but the reason they work at the moment is as follows:

3--The NPPL does a lot of work with local press in an attempt to drive public to the events.
The local press ALWAYS looks for the local interest story.
It is for this reason that Camille was actively trying to get teams to take the HB name. Not so that a bunch of people would turn out to support said team - thats optimistic. People don't turn up to support them, but if the spectators have been driven there through local marketing they do support them once they know they are local.
A perfect example is Rage, in the first year of the NPPL, vs. Dynasty in Miami. Dynasty were the team with all the 'fans', but these 'fans' were shouted down by the locals, who really rooted for the home team. The media notices this and the story becomes a more interesting one for them. 3 years down the line, with the appropriate marketing in the local area, the NPPL would expect to see people turn up to root for Rage again when they hear paintball is back in town. This is the long promotional dollar and the reason 40-80,000 flyers go to each event and aredistributed to the schools, universities, churches, bars, restuarants etc.

Thus the NPPL and the NXL have different philosophies and agenda's when it comes down to city/team names.

In HB I was asked many times if there was a local team playing the event. I was asked this in Denver too. In fact it is often one of the first questions asked. Locals want to know what team they should be rooting for.
Unfortunately many teams were reluctant to take the HB name as they were thinking in the NXL way. They chose the biggest cities they could. Maybe that will pay off for them in the long run, but for the next few years I think HB is the best city name available. The city is heavily involved in Paintball, the local businesses received around a million paintball players dollars this year. Paintball is now part of the towns extreme sport 'heritage' and I would have thought that a team tagged HB could make financial gain from that, even if it was just free hotel rooms, food etc.
Bearing in mind this is something the teams would have to do themselves it is probably safe to say it won't happen, but an entrepreneurial team captain would see this and be able to benefit from it.

This may not help you personally Loco, or your friends, so you may not see it as important, but it does help, it mainly helps the team that bears the cities name. Unfortunately no-one seems to 'get it', which is why no-one chose Denver, Tampa or Vegas.

Rage and Redz chose the best city names as it stands at the moment. Long term this could change, but right now thats how I see it.

TJ is totally right though, the role of promoting a teams name does not fall at the feet of the event promotors, but surely on the team itself, but then that would involve more than simply turning up, playing, asking sponsors for more stuff, bitching about refs/paint/cheating, getting drunk, and then leaving.
In which case it won't happen, so they will just have to make do with any residual promotion they get from the promotion of the event itself.

1-- I might very well be surprised if I believed but, alas, on this subject I am agnostic... And I might point out that bold letters don’t actually demonstrate anything but appear very forceful.
2--Yeah, that would be me. Too hip for school–and controversial to boot. I like the new tactic, btw. It’s hogwash but a better angle–though it’s been used before. Anyway, to the substance of your position ...
3--I would happily accept that this concept has some utility at the present time but only insomuch as it gives a local handle to an essentially novelty story. More to the point I can see an HB team serving the NPPL’s current interest but not being particularly useful long dollar (or short dollar unless you imagine Bob’s Big Boy is gonna sponsor their “hometown” team) to a team even if PP and the NPPL expect an annual HB event forever. The “image” value of city associations is all well and good particularly as the substance doesn’t currently exist but, [shameless plug] as I point out in an upcoming View, if some substance doesn’t follow the image will quickly tarnish. And, of course, what happens to the team when a venue changes that they based their association on? Until the point in time when there is some real connection between teams and locations–and will that ever really happen in the NPPL given its event structure except incidentally?–there is little question that the league can make some hay out of the proposition but no doubt that it won’t have any substantive impact on the league or the teams in terms of sporting legitimacy or the building of actual fan base(s) as things presently stand.

I would be interested in what sort of return the NPPL is seeing from the mass distributions as surely they are trying to calculate the utility of that project. How many years is it projected to be before the efforts at blitzing local media begins to establish events as both interesting and part of the community fabric? And even if decent numbers of locals routinely buy tickets to attend do the numbers really begin to ameliorate the costs given the limited number of events and event scale? (Yes, those were rhetorical questions as I don’t really expect anyone to answer and you would only fall back on your “I don’t know nuffin’” routine–even though you excised the most recent example in the ramping thread over in MLT.)

None of which is a reason not to do it, of course. But the subject in general is an interesting one as conventional wisdom seems to have sprouted up that city names are an unequivocal good and I’m suggesting, among other things, that refining a definition also is necessarily a limiting factor.

PS–I’m even helping the NPPL out with the Tampa promotions. What more can I do?

 

[jj igotcha]

Originally posted by Nexus Prattowski
I reckon we can just about scrape together 3 city names if we all put our thinking caps on!?

if thats the case why did you choose london when tigers already used it?

 

[Intheno]

I would happily accept that this concept has some utility at the present time

thankyou

The “image” value of city associations is all well and good

thanks again

I’m even helping the NPPL out with the Tampa promotions

Commendable, thankyou

How about these tactics?

I learned (from you Loco) that by only addressing the few lines of someone post that you can wax lyrical about, while not really addressing the message the post intended, you can appear constantly aloof and maintain opinions in the face of contradictory information. A bonus is that it usually infuriates the original poster...
I want to thank you for that too....

 

[Saris]

So you're saying that Baca is actually Dubya????

I've seen some insulting stuff on web forums, but that's just plain rude

 

[Baca Loco]

No Saris, what ITN is saying is that he didn't understand my response and/or couldn't rebut it so he resorted to his usual stance of lame "theatrics" while insisting that's what I do. It's shabby but typical.

 

[Chris - Nexus Eclipse]

Originally posted by jj igotcha
if thats the case why did you choose london when tigers already used it?

cos back then it wasnt an issue, in the EXL there were two london teams and two Stockholm teams.....

Originally posted by sykesg
the problem now is that the local team has lost it's tag due to marketing reasons over geography - confusing to the spectators

half our team comes from, works and lives in london....and Robbo....so whos local?



C